Hi, I lost contact with my Mavic Air today. Good line of sight. Only about 650m max. Plenty of battery. Only just managed to get a signal to turn it around and get it back before battery ran out. I have downloaded the log. How can I get someone to look at this and tell me what went wrong please?


https://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/44CG0XK1ZF56ZM4SKCTK/

Did it not engage RTH when the signal was lost?

I can't see anything wrong as such, at 11min 47.4s it reports signal restored after 1s. Loss of signal RTH would only initiate after  three second loss of control signal.
You also flew most of your flight while in Intelligent flight mode 'Point of interest' which is a bit unusual but shouldn't affect anything.

You might well have been seeing loss or break up of video from the aircraft before the control signal was lost.

What do you think was wrong with the flight ?

Hi Fishhead3,

Had a look at your flight.

I think you only lost your video conenction, no sign of a complete disconnect.
In TapFly mode your MA headed long time 228 degrees.
This from 2m21s (distance from home 49 meter) to 11m23s (distance 547 meters)

TapFly changed into P-GPS mode and....no stick input at all, MA hovered at 547 meters untill 12m49s.
After that YAW input to find the correct heading back home.
After some yawing you did find the way home!
Fully fwd and with 8.2 m/s speed it came home.

With a video disconnect the little compass still works, so use this to find the heading home.

Cheers
JJB

Good thing we have the flight data to look at.
That does make things more clear in most cases

Hi All

Thanks for the rapid responses. Maybe a few more details.

I had set the flight up to do a hyperlapse. The drone was drifting along at 1m/s and taking a photo every 10s for me to string together in a video. The flight path is one I have done many times before, and gone even further south than I did on this occasion. the launch area is 14m above sea level and the drone was another 20m above the launch site. There was no loss of video transmission. I got the first 'signal lost' and tried to disable TapFly and stop the photography but couldn't. The signal lost message kept on going on and off and I couldn't stop the drone from continuing. Meanwhile the battery was getting low. I also tried the RTH button, with no effect. I stood on a table at the headland to see if this may improve the signal but it didn't seem to. At one stage I got a signal for about 2s and managed to turn it around so at least it started to slowly come back and the signal strength improved.

the flight path runs along a beach and there is clear line of sight all the way to the southern headland, even from the take-off point. As mentioned above the drone was about 20m above the headland so there could not have been any interference from topography.

So, yes there was a bit of panic when I realised that I couldn't turn off the TapFly and initiate RTH. I could still see where i was (maybe the picture on the phone was just a frozen frame - not sure). But, at the time, it seemed a bit of a battle to turn things around before it just flew off into some houses and the battery ran out.   

Here is what I was aiming to do. From a few weeks ago

Stanwell Park hyperlapse

Fishhead3 Posted at 6-7 15:23
Hi All

Thanks for the rapid responses. Maybe a few more details.

Hi,

Nice to have some more info.

A manual performed Hyperlapse using a MA, love to see that video.

Your log doesn`t show a disconnect, all data is (almost) written every 0.1 second in the file.
All picture taken commands were there, so weird that the RTH command did not reached the MA.
(white marking in flight mode = picture taken)
In the file your MA landed by a user executed landing with 24% batt left, but in your text i read that the drone flew into some houses ?

What is see in the log that the tapfly in stopped (guess it did reach its destination), hovering at same spot for some time and you were still taen pictures every 10 seconds.

So for me your log and your text is a puzzle.

cheers
JJB

Hi, we're sorry to know about the problem that you had with your aircraft, however, it's glad that you've managed to retrieve your aircraft with this said problem. We're hoping that you could get the best feedback that you may need in regards to the flight records. Thank you for your support and may you please always have a safe flight.

Hi JJB

For some reason the link to the video did not embed. Here is another go:

https://youtu.be/LSflOmUW3V0

There was more than once instance where I got a 'signal/contact lost' message and its odd how only one event appears in the log. After I got the first one I tried to stop the photos and the TapFly so I could stop the drone flying any further into the housing area. I then tried the RTH button with no response. The connection came back on and went off several times so I gave up on trying to stop things and got focused on trying to turn it around, which was eventually successful.

So its interesting how the log and what I was experiencing don't align.

Anyway, my favourite toy is back but it was an alarming experience on the day

cheers

yes, in open beach and at minimally 100ft high, intermittent signal loss occurs, so i attempt usually upwards or downwards, to remove warn. along with it accompanies strong aircraft interfere, which is confusing since there's no man piloted airbornes seen around.
did u get strong aircraft interfere warns too?
beach folks having electronic broadcasting hardware do they interfere mavic air linked to rc?
do lifeguard walkie talkies interfere?
how about idled taxi cab dispatcher radio transmit?
puzzling how signal lost always occurs, as if insufficient transmitter power to reach out to mavic air